


caught by the tide of your same scars

by mollivanders



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Canon Universe, Caretaking, Consensual, F/M, Fluff, Pre-Relationship, Sharing a Bed, Sharing a Room, Sleepy Cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 08:17:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21012650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/pseuds/mollivanders
Summary: Cassian woke with a painful jolt, his recently healed back protesting the sharp angle of the couch he’d fallen asleep on. The last thing it was made for was sleep, a grimy antique pushed against the back of the cantina and covered in stains he didn’t want to think about. It was very late – or very early – and something was pinning him down.The rest of his body startled awake, and then froze as he realized the truth of his position. The something trapping him in this spot was a sleeping Jyn, curled up against his side. His arm was still half-wrapped around her shoulders, and on Jyn’s other side, Baze was dangerously close to falling backwards off the other end of the couch.It had been averylong night.





	caught by the tide of your same scars

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt was from thegiddyowl on tumblr: 'they fall asleep on each other by accident, and one of them wakes up and needs to decide what to do next'. Through the magic of storytelling, I’m going with Cassian being not-injured enough that the Rogue One team can join the Yavin IV post-Death Star party! Also, Cassian is the little spoon.

Cassian woke with a painful jolt, his recently healed back protesting the sharp angle of the couch he’d fallen asleep on. The last thing it was made for was sleep, a grimy antique pushed against the back of the cantina and covered in stains he didn’t want to think about. It was very late – or very early – and something was pinning him down.

The rest of his body startled awake, and then froze as he realized the truth of his position. The _something_ trapping him in this spot was a sleeping Jyn, curled up against his side. His arm was still half-wrapped around her shoulders, and on Jyn’s other side, Baze was dangerously close to falling backwards off the other end of the couch.

It had been a _very_ long night.

The Rebellion’s festivities after the Death Star had been destroyed had gone on long after the memorial ceremonies, and long after Command had disappeared, leaving the soldiers and spies and refugees to celebrate in peace. Even now, there were still some drunks stumbling about, seeking their quarters in vain. His own quarters were on the other side of the base, but between their release from the medical bay and the destruction of the Death Star, the rest of their team hadn’t been assigned quarters yet. 

(Right now – he can’t exactly bring himself to complain.)

His memory of the night before is foggy at best, and he’s grateful he can remember anything at all. He remembers Jyn _laughing_ – her hands tangling with his – a sparring challenge from Baze – the five of them making their way to the cantina – another round of drinks from Bodhi –

He remembers asking her to stay – with him – with the Rebellion – an earnest plea falling from his lips as she caught herself against him, a quiet moment in the midst of chaos.

(For the life of him, he can’t remember her answer.)

Jyn was still asleep, sprawled across his chest. She was still wearing her fingerless gloves, and from where she’d rested her cheek across her hands he could still see the splicer cards she carried in the glove’s hidden slots. In this light, in this moment, she looked like herself and yet _not_, a peaceful _might-have-been_ version of the fighter he’d seen in the streets of Jedha. Violence had come easily to her, but this –

(She was a familiar puzzle, one he was desperate to keep learning.)

There were other details he could see now, ones that might have escaped him in other moments. She was a study in movement most of the time, and even in stillness, she guarded every border. She looked younger like this, as if the years of war had fallen away, and it pulls at him in unjustified ways. It’s an unfamiliar sentiment, and he clings to it senselessly, half-asleep and hopeful. His hands catch at a loose strand of her hair and it curls around his fingers like ancient poetry, burnished and stolen. It lulls him into a sense of peace and for a single heartbeat, he forgets himself.

(Forgets his wounds – forgets the future – )

“You’re awake,” she mumbles without opening her eyes and he freezes, surprised and caught in a sense of guilt that doesn’t quite fit. She cracks her eyes open and scrunches her nose up at him. “I felt you wake up,” she says, keeping her voice low, a ghostly murmur in the night. Baze and a dozen other rebels snooze around them, still blissfully asleep. “How’s your back?”

He shifts just a little, finding an easier angle without breaking contact. “Better now,” he admits, his voice cracking from sleep. He clears it as she pushes herself up to check her chrono, rubbing at her eyes. He catches a glimpse of the hour and feels exhaustion pulling at his body all over again. He’s not as recovered from Scarif as he thought he was. None of them are.

“Do you remember how we got here?” he asks and she suppresses a smile. She looks less wrecked than he feels, but her eyes still betray her exhaustion.

“Bodhi had a friend,” she says, and scans the room for their missing comrade. “His friend had friends here, and then – ” She pauses, groaning and pressing the heels of her palms to her head, “it became an open bar.”

“That’s it,” he says, and pulls them both up into a sitting position. “I have perfectly good quarters we can sleep in instead of here.” She freezes, looking at his averted gaze as he adds, “if you…want to come with me.” He pauses before adding, incidentally, “there’s a ‘fresher.”

A long moment grows between them as the offer hangs between them, heavy in its promise – in its possibility. He doesn’t know what he can offer, what his piecemeal memory can promise, but in the end she nods with a tight smile.

“A ‘fresher sounds nice,” she allows and he smiles, grasping her offered hand to pull her up off the couch. Baze snorts in his sleep and Jyn looks at his precarious perch in alarm, letting go of Cassian’s hand to pull Baze’s boots off the sticky cantina floor and onto the couch. He snorts in his sleep again and curls up, back to the couch, before falling deeper in slumber.

“Do you have any idea where the others are?” Cassian asks and Jyn blinks, swaying on her feet. Older ghosts than Scarif seem to be with her too, more than she lets on. It matches his own ghosts, more than he first believed.

(It’s one reason, he knows, he trusts her the way he does.)

“Nope,” she admits, and when he puts an arm around her waist to support her, she falls into an easy rhythm with him, following his steps. They’ve done this before; she’d done this for him at Scarif. This walk is easier than the one to the shuttle had been, and next to him, she weighs almost nothing, her steps running on autopilot. By the time they make it to his quarters they’re both half-powered. He nudges her to the ‘fresher first and while she’s in there he toes out of his boots and shrugs off his jacket. He’s already setting up a pile of blankets on the floor when Jyn steps out of the ‘fresher and reads the room with a frown.

“What’s that for?” she asks, fighting off a yawn, and he gestures to the bed.

“You take the bed,” he says, and crosses paths with her in the ‘fresher door, intent on brushing his teeth if nothing else. There’s a horrible moss-like feel in his mouth; he has _no_ idea what they all drank but the aftertaste is terrible. Whatever it was – never again.

She doesn’t say anything at first, hesitation in her every detail, but he nods reassuringly to the bed and she either gives in or loses an internal battle with exhaustion. He hears her boots drop to the floor and the soft rustle of blankets being pulled back before he makes his way back out. She’s sitting up in the bed and it sends a jolt through his body, an alertness he didn’t know he was capable of right now.

“Don’t sleep on the floor,” she says, her voice still scratchy. Her hair is still mussed from earlier and in the dim lighting, his imagination is trying to run away with him.

“I’ve slept on worse,” he says, taking another spare blanket and shaking it out. At the least, he thinks, the floor is less dangerous than the alternative.

“Seriously,” she grumbles, and shifts back towards the wall so there’s more space. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

He could argue, and turn off the lights, and just try to sleep on the cold stone of the Massassi temple. He could try to pretend he doesn’t still remember the way she felt curled up on him on the couch, or how her even breathing made all the tension of the last month seem like nothing in comparison.

“Alright,” he says instead, and before he can change his mind he turns the lights off and crawls in next to her. She’s tense next to him, bundled into herself, and he’s already thinking this is a mistake when she starts chuckling, helpless laughter that makes her steady herself with a hand on his arm.

“_What?_” he asks, bemused as hell, and she snorts.

“Your breath smells nice,” she says, and her eyes find his in the dark. He doesn’t say anything – the most dangerous silence so far – but reaches out and traces his thumb across her cheek. His body aches all over, wounds he carries with him – some from nearly living, some from nearly dying. They’re singing from his exhaustion and some instinct pushes him closer to her, _knowing_ for him. She quiets under his touch and slides her free arm around his back, holding him steady. Easily, their foreheads meet in a quiet embrace and he lets out a long breath he didn’t know he was still holding.

“Will you stay?” he asks, praying it’s an answer she’s already given. When she lets out a shaky breath he breathes her in, a smile escaping him. She used his toothpaste and somehow that, more than anything on this very strange late night, makes his heart ache with intimacy.

“Yeah,” she says. “I’m not going anywhere.” She shifts onto her back so he can rest against her, her arm protective of his spine. With a last shaky exhale, he settles against her, finding rest in the middle of the road, not the end, and the last thing he knows before he drifts off is the steady beat of her heart beside him.

(In dreams, they find what may yet come.)

_Finis_


End file.
